“If the industry we created now argues that THC is safe in a dispensary but dangerous in a liquor store, voters and policymakers will reasonably conclude we were never serious.”
By Aaron Smith, Third Rail Advisory
Chris Lindsey and I both spent years at the Marijuana Policy Project before going on to help build the legal cannabis industry. I strongly disagree with the support he voiced in a recent Marijuana Moment op-ed for the pending federal hemp ban, both from a principled policy perspective and as a political strategy.
Start with where we agree: we need parity. Having one set of laws for hemp-derived THC and another for the identical molecule derived from marijuana is untenable and absurd policy. But the answer is not to push one product back into the darkness of prohibition. The cannabis industry should use this moment to advance federal regulations that work for marijuana and hemp alike.
For decades, reformers have made one central case: Cannabis and its active compounds are far safer than alcohol and many over-the-counter drugs, and the law should treat them accordingly. If the industry we created now argues that THC is safe in a dispensary but dangerous in a liquor store, voters and policymakers will reasonably conclude we were never serious.
The science isn’t complicated. Delta-9 THC and THCa from a hemp plant are chemically identical to delta-9 THC and THCa from a marijuana plant. Hemp is cannabis.
Lindsey’s argument only works by lumping naturally occurring plant THC and THCa together with chemically converted cannabinoids like delta-8 THC and HHC. Converted compounds deserve further study and distinct rules. THC that is chemically identical regardless of its source deserves parity, backed by the remedy we have always proposed: testing standards, accurate labels, age gates and penalties for bad actors.
Now consider the system Lindsey and his current organization, the American Trade Association for Cannabis and Hemp, understandably wants to protect.
The overly restrictive state models in place today are the product of political compromises made to achieve incremental change. They are not the ultimate policy destination. These programs were also designed to exist alongside federal prohibition, and it shows: limited licenses, heavy taxes, no interstate commerce, banking challenges and a federal tax code that still treats licensed operators as drug traffickers.
Those systems are largely failing. Licensed businesses are closing across mature markets, illicit sales still undercut legal ones and small businesses are hit hardest.
Alcohol is sold in grocery stores, gas stations, restaurants, airplanes, amusement parks and dozens of other settings. There is no reason adult THC products should not be available alongside alcohol wherever it is sold. The hemp market already shows this works: a tested product on a shelf, at a price people will pay, available to adults in nearly every state.
That market is not perfect. Untested products and inconsistent labeling are real problems. The answer is not a ban, it’s regulation. Set a federal floor for testing, labeling, dosage and age verification, and apply the same rules to the same molecule regardless of which plant it came from.
Lindsey also raises something that should stay central to this movement: repairing the damage of prohibition. Expungement, reinvestment and real opportunity for the people enforcement hit hardest belong in the next phase of reform, but a ban does nothing to help them. If anything, it creates new offenders and leaves in place the taxes and barriers that are crushing equity licensees.
I have worked alongside cannabis operators for years, and I am sympathetic to people who invested everything in businesses built to fit the current model and now see it disrupted by federally legal hemp. But disruption here is progress for the plant, and a unique opportunity to advance rational public policy.
The licensed industry would be better served shaping those federal rules than lobbying to eliminate the category. One approach many already support is to limit dosage and product type for anything sold outside dispensaries, so that low-dose THC beverages and edibles are available alongside alcohol while smokables, vapes and higher-potency products stay in licensed dispensaries.
Federally legal THC expands access to millions of adults and patients who would otherwise be unlikely to try cannabis, either because their state does not allow it or because they don’t feel comfortable visiting a dispensary. A THC seltzer in the wine aisle or at a craft brewery is a lot more approachable. That is a vastly larger consumer base, more customers for dispensaries over time and better public health outcomes as people substitute cannabis for alcohol and other more harmful substances.
It’s only natural for licensed businesses to try to eliminate competition from companies that found another way in. But it’s short-sighted, and it has put parts of the industry on the same side of this fight as the country’s leading prohibitionist groups. That alliance should trouble anyone who supports legal cannabis.
It’s also an unwise political strategy. Some seem to believe that once Congress closes the hemp loophole, it will turn its attention to descheduling cannabis. That is not how Congress works. Congress either ignores an issue for years or hastily puts out a fire, and once the hemp fire is out, the pressure to act on cannabis goes with it. A ban does not clear the path to legalization. It hands the movement’s opponents a win they can point to for a decade.
We can end federal prohibition with rules that work for state licensees and hemp businesses alike. Getting there requires the cannabis industry to unite around that program and come to the table with the already powerful coalition of hemp and alcohol interests engaged on this issue, rather than joining prohibitionists to preserve a broken status quo. Fairness means lowering the barriers on licensed operators, not raising them on everyone else.
Lindsey and I spent our careers in a movement built on one idea: prohibition fails and regulation works. That idea does not change because the THC came from a hemp field instead of a licensed grow. Prohibition was never the path to legalization. It is not the path now, either.
Aaron Smith is the founder of Third Rail Advisory and co-founder, board member and former CEO of the National Cannabis Industry Association. He previously served as California policy director for the Marijuana Policy Project.
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